Packed amazingly well. Shrink Wrapped, then bubble wrap, then a shipping box, then packing paper then a bigger box.. This packet was intended to arrive in one piece and it did.
Tim (SmashTV) himself was very helpful and friendly on the email, and he does a grand job which I for one appreciate as without him (or Mike at the other midibox shop) I would stand next to zero chance of getting a project like this off the ground.
Well… 75 of them for my custom midibox. Illuminated push buttons 15mm square caps with a slight indent from rapidonline. Not the lightest of press weights, 2N, but they are big enough and will be mounted in a heavy chassis so they should be fine.
Look good lit up as well..
I’ve been planning for months, and thinking about it for at least two years, and I’ve finally ordered my Midibox kit from SmashTV.
For those not aware Midibox is a open source custom midi controller project designed by a nice chap called Thorsten Klose and let free into the world for those of us who cannot find the right midi controller for our needs. There’s several types of Midibox. Some for boxes with motorised faders, some that are stand alone midi sequencers and even SID chip based synths. All are build at home and decidedly non-commercial. In fact you can’t even sell your midibox without asking permission!
I’ve salvaged my pots, found some illuminated buttons that I can afford and the kit should be here in the next few weeks with any luck.
First stage is to get the Core and I/O boards built which by all accounts is not too bad and with any luck by the time I’m back from the WWDC I’ll be well on my way to start testing.
Sold Out. Finito. 500 units gone into the world. The beautiful, logo-less, indie made musical interface has sold out.
I always held out hope that one day the money would be there and available and I could get in touch with the guys at monome and order my very own but fate has dictated that one will not be mine.
By the time the $500 dollar price tag + shipping + VAT + Import Duty was totted up there was no chance of it being affordable.
So congratulations to the monomons (or whatever they are called) for a successful run and here’s looking to the upcoming 100h (256 buttons!) for more geek musician pron fodder.
I dread to think what a 40h would fetch on ebay in the next few months…
Just in time for WOMAD Charlton Park we’ve finally launched our new community website Womad Stories.
Based on the same ideas and technology we used with Real World Remixed the idea is to encourage the festival goers to recount their favourite tales about the experience. From performance reviews to more general festival tales, both good and bad, we hope the site will bring out the inner journalist in the WOMAD punters.
Hooking in to the Flikr idea users of the site can also upload photographs to illustrate their stories and to enable this we are using a combination of custom php uploading scripts and the lightbox javascript library.
The most difficult part of the site to get working is tucked away in the submit and filter sections. The sideways scrolling filter panel was my best guess at how to deal with handling performance data from festivals dating back 5 years (with older information planned) in a simple and easy to understand interface.
As usual the site, from the back end to the interface is custom built in-house and has, for us, had an unusually long gestation as the original idea was floated nearly nine months ago. Development of the in-house ticketing system for Charlton Park and the long overdue redesign of Peter Gabriel’s website put the launch of the site back so it’s great to see it finally live.
